Date: September 1, 1759.

"The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object but by passing to another."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760

"I was telling you, my dear friend (said she) for so I shall ever call you from this moment, your kindness having compleated the conquest which your beauty had before made of my heart, I was telling you, that I was going to visit a family this morning, where I promised myself the highest joy that...

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760, 1803

"To farther conquests still my soul aspires, / And all my bosom glows with martial fires"

— Cambridge, Richard Owen (1717-1802)

Date: 1760, 1850

One may hope "to find / An easy conquest o'er a woman's mind"

— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)

Date: 1760, 1850

An "anxious tender air / Proves o'er her heart the conquest won"

— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)

Date: 1760, 1850

"Say, youth, and can'st thou keep secure / Thy heart from conquering beauty's power?"

— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)

Date: 1760-7

"[T]here is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or other, which follow each other in train just like--A train of artillery? said my uncle Toby."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But the heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain,--the soul of Phutatorius, together with all his ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgment, resolution, deli...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

One may "play to the eye with a mere monkey's art" and leave "to sense the conquest of the heart"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)